Visualization as Art

[Synthetik]

I've been noticing more and more art projects that seem to be about taking a real world information stream and visualizing it in some way as a means to generate an artistic abstract image. Here's an example of what i mean:

"Building a More Meaningul Existence" by Daniel Everett Daniel writes..."For this project I used a graphics editor built into an early arcade game to convert spam emails I had received into a virtual landscape. By reconfiguring the graphics editor interface to accept keystrokes as input, I was able to build these landscapes solely by transcribing the spam messages and compiling them. For this piece I specifically chose spam messages that promised me a more meaningful life, increased happiness, and a greater sense of self-worth. " So one question i keep asking myself is 'what new features should i be adding to Studio Artist to make this kind of thing possible for Studio Artist users'? Not necessarily the ability to modulate the paint synthesizer with text (although maybe that would be a cool idea). I'm kind of thinking aloud here and opening up a discussion forum for anyone who would be interested in using or doing something like this in Studio Artist. All of the artists who do this kind of thing tend to be code hackers of some kind so the idea is how to make it simple for people in a context like using Studio Artist without getting into people writing code, or rewiring early arcade game hardware for that matter.